Harvard University Is Considering Making Tuition Free for All Its Students

Yes, you read that right.

It’s almost time for Harvard alumni to elect the school’s new Board of Overseers, and one group of five candidates wants to make the school’s elite education “free and fair” if elected. Harvard will be free? Yep — the group's plan is for the school’s $37.6 billion endowment — the largest in the country — to cover tuition for all undergraduates. They figure once that happens, Harvard’s admissions process can truly become “fair,” removing financial consideration from the table when considering minority and middle-class applicants. In the past, lawmakers have tossed around the idea of making schools with endowments of over $1 billion to spend “about 25% of their annual earnings on tuition assistance,” reportsThe New York Times.

“There is a common misconception that endowments, including Harvard’s, can be accessed like bank accounts, used for anything at any time as long as funds are available,” Jeff Neal, a Harvard spokesman, told the Times.

Ron Unz, a software entrepreneur from California, is the mastermind behind the “Free Harvard, Fair Harvard” campaign. He told the [Times*] that, “Our focus is entirely on greater transparency in admissions — namely urging Harvard to provide much more detailed information on how they select the very small slice of applicants receiving offers of admission, in order to curb the huge potential abuse possible under the entirely opaque system.” That opaque system is being contested by an ongoing federal lawsuit claiming that Harvard discriminates against Asian Americans by choosing less-qualified white candidates over them to meet quotas.

Although Unz claims he’s not in favor of abolishing affirmative action entirely, other candidates in the group have a history of pushing against the policy. Either way, if tuition at Harvard actually becomes free, it'll greatly help students of all colors, and take the high sticker price out of getting a top education.